The Athletic

[Can_of_corn]

I figure it's time to mention it.

They have been by far the busiest team this offseason.

So far they have signed Jeff Sullivan, Jonah Keri,  Eno Sarris, Ken Rosenthal and Jayson Starke.

The thing is, they are a subscription service.  Special on right now is $3.74/MO for the first year.

Worth spending $45 for the first year and $60 for the following years?

(They also write about other sports but serious who cares?)

In related news, is Fangraphs going to be able to weather the talent loss?

[Luke-OH]

4 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

I figure it's time to mention it.

They have been by far the busiest team this offseason.

So far they have signed Jeff Sullivan, Jonah Keri,  Eno Sarris, Ken Rosenthal and Jayson Starke.

The thing is, they are a subscription service.  Special on right now is $3.74/MO for the first year.

Worth spending $45 for the first year and $60 for the following years?

(They also write about other sports but serious who cares?)

In related news, is Fangraphs going to be able to weather the talent loss?

Jeff Sullivan joined the Athletic? Where did you see that?  

[Can_of_corn]

16 minutes ago, Luke-OH said:

Jeff Sullivan joined the Athletic? Where did you see that?  

To be honest it was Reddit's baseball page.  Normally fairly reliable (at least once folks respond to a post) but in this case they probably took his tweet the wrong way.

 

[Luke-OH]

11 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

To be honest it was Reddit's baseball page.  Normally fairly reliable (at least once folks respond to a post) but in this case they probably took his tweet the wrong way.

 

Gotcha, I've seen him making snarky comments about The Athletic on Twitter, but Ken Rosenthal didn't mention him in his article about the new writers.

I think Fangraphs is fine as long as Sullivan stays.  I've always liked him much better than Dave Cameron, I think he's the glue that holds the place together.

[thatbearflies]

Honestly, I respect the work of many of the writers that they are acquiring, but I don't really consider subscribing. If anything, I am looking forward to reading some of the new voices that will emerge because of all the departures. It's not that their work lacks quality obviously, but there is so much conjecture and uncertainty in baseball that I think at times they may overvalue their own voice. They have inside access and sources, certainly, but the facts are going to be released no matter what and then we all pour over them.  I don't think I have ever walked away from a Stark article armed with anything more than a strangely obscure fact about how X player has the most singles on a Wednesday in May where the forecast is sunny skies, but actually turns out to be overcast. 

There's plenty of avenues for great analysis, predictions, stats, etc., and The Athletic will probably be one of those sources for a lot of people. However, I've read great content from everyday fans, some great work is produced from this site alone, and even journalists that the article might be the first time you're even seeing their name. I'm confident it will be a quality site and there will probably articles and topics that I wish I had access too, but for now, I'm satisfied with some of the other options and avenues I can follow to get quality, baseball content. 

[BohKnowsBmore]

On 2/13/2018 at 8:45 PM, Luke-OH said:

Gotcha, I've seen him making snarky comments about The Athletic on Twitter, but Ken Rosenthal didn't mention him in his article about the new writers.

I think Fangraphs is fine as long as Sullivan stays.  I've always liked him much better than Dave Cameron, I think he's the glue that holds the place together.

It's not Carson asking what in baseball is like a hard-to-refill bird feeder?

[Luke-OH]

34 minutes ago, BohKnowsBmore said:

It's not Carson asking what in baseball is like a hard-to-refill bird feeder?

I am actually strangly fond of Cistulli’s shtick, and since he does the editing, perhaps he does hold the place together.

[BohKnowsBmore]

2 minutes ago, Luke-OH said:

I am actually strangly fond of Cistulli’s shtick, and since he does the editing, perhaps he does hold the place together.

I actually enjoy him on Fangraphs audio as well.  I was just having some fun with it.

[Can_of_corn]

I've kinda been rooting against The Athletic this whole time but I'm ramping it up after this latest news.

 

[Can_of_corn]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/23/sports/the-athletic-newspapers.html

 

Quote

“We will wait every local paper out and let them continuously bleed until we are the last ones standing,” Alex Mather, a co-founder of The Athletic, said in an interview in San Francisco. “We will suck them dry of their best talent at every moment. We will make business extremely difficult for them.”

Just in case folks were wondering why I was rooting against them.

[atomic]

3 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/23/sports/the-athletic-newspapers.html

 

Just in case folks were wondering why I was rooting against them.

Because sports is the only reason people read Local newspapers. LOL.  
 

[Frobby]

19 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/23/sports/the-athletic-newspapers.html

 

Just in case folks were wondering why I was rooting against them.

Reading that whole article, I don’t have a problem with what The Athletic is trying to do.    What about these parts?

To understand why The Athletic is so brazen about its vulture strategy, one must appreciate the state of play at local and regional newspapers throughout the country. Under dire financial duress, many have put extraordinary demands on beat writers to produce heavy volumes of content, often without wage increases. The reporters are sometimes the most knowledgeable sources of information on the teams they cover, but they are afforded little opportunity to step back and write impactful articles.

These reporters are skilled experts feeling the strains of a crippled industry, and many are looking for a way out.

* * *

“It was really hard to see everything that was happening in terms of the layoffs,” said Deepen Parikh, an executive at Courtside Ventures, one of The Athletic’s largest investors, “and knowing we really, genuinely had an opportunity to capitalize on it and not take it.”

* * *

“We are doing great work,” Mather said. “We treat our writers really well, we pay them well, and we are doing amazing journalism. If someone has a problem with that, that’s on them.”

* * *

Mather and Hansmann insist that they, and their investors, are in it for the long haul, and that the time is finally right for a subscription media product to go big. “The advertising business model does not align with quality,” Mather said. “It’s hot takes instead of objective analysis, it’s short-term instead of long-term, it’s serving sponsors instead of users, it’s thinking big instead of great.”

“It really comes down to the business model,” he added. “That is our core belief.”

 

 

[VaBird1]

18 hours ago, atomic said:

Because sports is the only reason people read Local newspapers. LOL.  
 

I canceled the Post when they stopped covering the Orioles.  There wasn’t any other local news in it besides sports.

[atomic]

14 minutes ago, VaBird1 said:

I canceled the Post when they stopped covering the Orioles.  There wasn’t any other local news in it besides sports.

I read the Washington Post daily as well as the Baltimore Sun.  I don't read it either for Orioles coverage. 

[VaBird1]

1 minute ago, atomic said:

I read the Washington Post daily as well as the Baltimore Sun.  I don't read it either for Orioles coverage. 

Good thing.